The
music swirls and flows in remarkable waves throughout the 75 minutes of
''Running Man,'' a new musical theater piece that is carving out a river
of heartbreaking pleasure in a tiny performance space in SoHo. Based on
the moving poetry of Cornelius Eady and the plaintive, sweet-and-sour
music of the jazz composer Diedre Murray, ''Running Man'' occupies a category
of theater all its own.

de
Haas & Jajuan

Operating
at the exotic juncture where chamber musical, jazz session and opera might
converge, the piece, performed spectacularly by a cast of six and a five-member
orchestra, taps a well of feeling so deep at times it seems spiritual.
By no means is this a conventional musical -- there are no show tunes
in this show -- but it shares with the successful versions of more mainstream
forms an eloquence in structure and storytelling.The
story of ''Running Man,'' directed with a spare sophistication by Diane
Paulus, is both elegantly simple and terribly complicated: Tommy, a young
black man of great promise played by Darius De Haas, has lost his way
in life, and the people close to him, his mother (Roberta Gumbel), father
(Robert Jason Jackson) and sister, Miss Look (Kimberly Jajuan), summon
him in song, both as a grown-up and a little boy (Chris Rustin). Their
memories and reveries are encouraged, embellished and disparaged by a
singing narrator, Seven (Ronnell Bey), who, seven years after Tommy's
disappearance, asks the kinds of aftermath questions reporters always
pose: What made him go bad? What made his luck turn on him? Mr. Eady and
Ms. Murray know that finding the answers could take a lifetime. Confining
themselves to a decidedly more economical time frame, they toss suggestions
of a life gone wrong at us in offhand, lyrical ways, riffing on the sexual
and social pressures brought to bear on a sensitive young man by a father
obsessed with discipline and a mother in love with learning, determined
that her son ''bring me the world.'' In one especially wrenching scene,
Mr. De Haas sings of his confusion, of his ecstatic pain, while
applying lipstick to his mother's lips.

Every element of ''Running Man,'' presented by the Music-Theater Group
at the Here theater, has been lovingly thought out, from the stunning
musical direction by Linda Twine to Ms. Murray's arresting score for guitar,
violin, accordion, cello and percussion gives anguish a discordant language.
The actors, gifted singers all, seem organically in tune with their material.

Mr.
De Haas gives one of the best musical performances this season. Assured
and impassioned, his running man is a figure of mystery and pathos, his
failure to thrive the stuff of modern tragedy.

Ms.
Gumbel is a lovely and ultimately sorrowful figure. Mr. Jackson is equally
good as a father of foolish fortitude, and Ms. Jajuan proves to be a sister
of dignity and strength in pulling away when the brother threatens to
drag her down. Ms. Bey is both commanding and droll, and Mr. Rustin shows
himself to be a young actor with grace and presence. Together, they paint
with music the only new world in a long while that I'd like to visit again.